The Lost Tales of Axeoth

The game Might & Magic: Heroes VII, developed by Limbic Entertainment.
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Marzhin
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The Lost Tales of Axeoth

Unread postby Marzhin » 26 Sep 2015, 09:52

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Hi everyone,

As you may know, later this year we'll be releasing the first of two free campaigns for Heroes VII. Known collectively as the Lost Tales of Axeoth, these campaigns (Unity and Every Dog Has His Day) are based on unused scripts from Terry Ray written while H4 was in development, but never produced back then (although their names appear in H4's high-score screen :))

Besides the celebration of the 20th Anniversary of Heroes, for us these campaigns are also a good opportunity to also develop the map editor and demonstrate its mapmaking and modding capabilities. And of course, all new content included in these maps will be available to all mapmakers to use in their own creations :)
The first one, Unity, will be released in late 2015. Players will take control of the Academy faction across 5 maps. The story follows the characters Genevieve Seymour and Pherlon as they embark on a journey to the Broken Isles in search for a greater understanding of magic. Genevieve knows in her heart that in the past magic users have forced magic into an unnatural organization based on the elements. There must be another way… and Genevieve is determined to discover it.

The second campaign, Every Dog Has His Day, will be released in early 2016. Players will take control of the Stronghold faction across 3 maps, and more specifically the barbarian hero, Dogwoggle. At the height of his career, Dogwoggle was one of King Kilgor's barbarian generals, but he soon learned that Kilgor was quite mad and leading the world of Enroth toward destruction. Having managed to flee to Axeoth, Dogwoggle now finds himself hunted by his former allies. As it turns out, Dogwoggle might be slightly responsible for the end of the old world…
Since these campaigns are, in a way, a spiritual successor to my old Legends of the Ancients campaigns (it's not a coincidence I've chosen a name with these initials :p), that were hosted here on CH, I thought it could be fun to create a topic here, and discuss what kind of things you'd like to see in the Lost Tales. I may not be able to do everything (I'm mostly working on this project by myself, with Limbic as "tech support / cheerleaders" :)) but I might be able to do a few :)

So far we've already announced:

> 68 new Hall Heroes, most of them based on the original art of Heroes III and IV’s portrait artist, George Almond.
> 8 new Story Heroes, including main characters Genevieve Seymour, Pherlon and Dogwoggle, as well as their friends and foes.
> Several Heroes IV music tracks used under license from Rob King and Paul Anthony Romero, to recreate Axeoth’s enchanted atmosphere.
> New (and old) artefacts.
> And of course… surprises!

While I won't spoil all the surprises, I can already tell you they include a bunch of new buildings and map locations. Another thing we've discussed in the comments of the H7 blog is that the current factions will be modded to be closer to their H4 counterparts. So yes, Necropolis will have Demons instead of spiders. I know the thought of "Infernopolis" still generates strong feelings across the boards, but to me that's an integral part of Heroes IV :) And while I won't actively hunt all references to Ashan, I'll change the most obvious ones (i.e. Tear of Asha ==> Grail).

So that's it :) I hope you'll like these campaigns and I for one am thrilled to be able to give life to Terry's untold stories, not to mention that we're returning officially to the ancient universe for the first time in more than a decade. It's also nice to have finally an official map of the lands of Heroes IV. Funny how it looks nothing like how I imagined it back in LotA :D

Cheers ^^

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Re: The Lost Tales of Axeoth

Unread postby Kalah » 26 Sep 2015, 12:07

Excellent. It's good to see great campaign makers taking an active part in creating playable scenarios for Heroes games. :)
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Re: The Lost Tales of Axeoth

Unread postby Avonu » 26 Sep 2015, 16:22

Marzhin wrote:[Funny how it looks nothing like how I imagined it back in LotA :D
I told you not once about that. :devil:

BTW - why you didn't mention the original map?

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Oh, and is this island on the bottom-left Devonshire from Gathering Storm?

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Re: The Lost Tales of Axeoth

Unread postby Demilich » 26 Sep 2015, 18:55

As for me, I'm just happy to feel the magic of the Old Universe again. I don't know if it is possible to include such themes as spaceships/kreegans/Gravel's ideas into the storylines of Lost Tales, but this elements are the ones that made LotA setting so unique.

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Re: The Lost Tales of Axeoth

Unread postby Marzhin » 26 Sep 2015, 19:09

Avonu wrote:Oh, and is this island on the bottom-left Devonshire from Gathering Storm?
I don't know, but I don't think so. It doesn't look at all like the coast of Lodwar (the continent where TGS takes place).

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Re: The Lost Tales of Axeoth

Unread postby Corlagon » 27 Sep 2015, 13:46

For the public interest (with thanks to Jennifer Bullard for sharing):

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Re: The Lost Tales of Axeoth

Unread postby Avonu » 27 Sep 2015, 14:27

Marzhin wrote:I don't know, but I don't think so. It doesn't look at all like the coast of Lodwar (the continent where TGS takes place).
Thanks. I competely forgot about Lodwar.
So, two maps down, two more maps to go.

@Corlagon
Thanks a lot and nice to still see you around.

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Re: The Lost Tales of Axeoth

Unread postby Karmakeld » 27 Sep 2015, 19:12

i just wonder how this makes Nekross, Paleadra and Great Arcan all neighbors or is my memory from the Half-Dead campaign wrong? coz I recall Gauldoth signing a peace treaty with his neighboring nations..
For my part I guess I'd just like to see some (cross) references to H-IV stories/lore.. It's hard going into details other than that, as I asume you already got storyline and objectives set..
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Re: The Lost Tales of Axeoth

Unread postby gourley4p » 29 Sep 2015, 02:16

Loving the maps in this thread. To this day, I have scads of maps for games I don't even play anymore. It's always sparked my imagination to study a games maps and think about the lore. I look forward to the Lost Tales of Axeoth.

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Re: The Lost Tales of Axeoth

Unread postby cuc » 25 Dec 2015, 10:05

Blog update: the first campaign Unity will be released in February 2016.
https://mmh7.ubi.com/en/blog/post/view/ ... ruary-2016

Frankly, one of the reasons I bought MMH7 is to own the final missing pieces of H4. The two months can't go by faster.

I do wonder whether the campaign will contain a gameplay mod that changes the spell system to better resemble H4's, considering the entire point of Unity's story is explaining the change from H3's elemental system to H4's five forces.

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Re: The Lost Tales of Axeoth

Unread postby Karmakeld » 25 Dec 2015, 14:10

Cuc, now that will indeed be interesting to see how the spell system and spells are handled to fit the story/change from H3 to H4.
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Re: The Lost Tales of Axeoth

Unread postby cjlee » 25 Dec 2015, 15:27

Marzhin, you have greatly disappointed me, but not in a bad way!

Thanks to you I am now MUCH, MUCH MORE interested in buying Heroes7.

Nope, I'm still going to hold back. As I'd said before, no point buying until this buggy game is really stable because I don't want savegames destroyed by any new patch.

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Re: The Lost Tales of Axeoth

Unread postby ThunderTitan » 26 Dec 2015, 10:52

Corlagon wrote:For the public interest (with thanks to Jennifer Bullard for sharing):

Image

Heh, the maps actually fit the coastline... nice.
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Re: The Lost Tales of Axeoth

Unread postby cjlee » 26 Dec 2015, 17:53

I think that by far the most important contributions Marzhin is making, lie in the modding, the maps and the extras. These provide a template for mapmakers using the H7 editor for the first time, and they effectively showcase what is possible with the editor.

I think we are at a fairly important point now. H7 must survive, and it can only survive is if Limbic finishes the patching work and custom mapmakers start to like this game and produce their own maps. If H7 goes down, I don't think this franchise can ever recover. Marzhin's work goes far beyond merely bringing a H4 campaign into modern times.

Marzhin, I beg you, please do not release this until you have play tested it and am confident bugs are ironed out.

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Re: The Lost Tales of Axeoth

Unread postby gourley4p » 26 Dec 2015, 19:10

Well said, cjlee.

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Re: The Lost Tales of Axeoth

Unread postby cuc » 27 Dec 2015, 03:12

What is uncanny was that the Lost Tales of Axeoth project is enabled by the fanbase's conservative votes for the traditional faction lineup, and for better or worse, retroactively justified the votes from some perspectives.
cuc wrote:I do wonder whether the campaign will contain a gameplay mod that changes the spell system to better resemble H4's, considering the entire point of Unity's story is explaining the change from H3's elemental system to H4's five forces.
As I recall, this has precedents in MMH6's DLC which included some changes to buildings.

Lost Tales of Axeoth probably wouldn't need new building artwork. Changes to the spell system would be more important.

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Re: The Lost Tales of Axeoth

Unread postby Karmakeld » 27 Dec 2015, 23:02

Well regarding the conservative vote for traditional lineup, I've read several people not wanting the Infernopolis lineup from H4, but I'm not sure if they'll even appear in any if the two campaigns.
But if it is to resemble the world of Axeoth they'd at least need to rename some of the buildings and replace some of the Academy troops. I'm curious to read about the result.
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Re: The Lost Tales of Axeoth

Unread postby cjlee » 28 Dec 2015, 10:40

Karmakeld wrote:Well regarding the conservative vote for traditional lineup, I've read several people not wanting the Infernopolis lineup from H4, but I'm not sure if they'll even appear in any if the two campaigns.
But if it is to resemble the world of Axeoth they'd at least need to rename some of the buildings and replace some of the Academy troops. I'm curious to read about the result.
I'm much more concerned about the state of the bugs. There are people posting severe bugs for the latest patch. At 1.6 we are still nowhere near where Heroes V was at 1.1.

If so much more debugging and patching is needed, there is the danger that any modded game or scenario will turn into a mess when new patches are issued.

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Re: The Lost Tales of Axeoth

Unread postby cuc » 19 Feb 2016, 12:01

Unity is out! I still can't actually play the game due to a bug, so I just took a look at the text and cutscene files.

Aside from one or two evocative scenes, the script is kinda barebones and superfluous in that it doesn't exactly go in-depth or put everyting in Heroes IV in a new light. Nonetheless, it's nice to have a little more closure with Heroes IV.

SPOILER follows:
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Surprisingly, using the MMH7 magic system ended up not a problem, since the idea is that people kept using the elemental magic system when they migrated to Axeoth, until this campaign, where Genevieve brought back knowledge of the five fundamental forces from the Broken Isles and revolutionized the science of magic with her "Unity Magic" system. The old magic system being the mainstream actually fits the story.

I giggled at the blantant Marzhin-ism of the intro and outro cutscenes. Reframe the Broken Isles as remnants of a nacelle ship crashed into Axeoth, that contains some Ancient devices that amplify each of the five forces? Sure, why not? I still prefer to think of them as natural phenomena of Axeoth though.

Also, it seems there will be some information never revealed before about Dogwoggle in the next campaign.

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Re: The Lost Tales of Axeoth

Unread postby Marzhin » 22 Feb 2016, 11:02

cuc wrote:I giggled at the blantant Marzhin-ism of the intro and outro cutscenes. Reframe the Broken Isles as remnants of a nacelle ship crashed into Axeoth, that contains some Ancient devices that amplify each of the five forces? Sure, why not? I still prefer to think of them as natural phenomena of Axeoth though.
Well to be fair although this was indeed my suggestion it was approved by Terry. I wouldn't have put it in without his consent.


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